Friday, March 4, 2011

Notes from the Mad Science Lab: Military Robots

I see that the Defense Department has commissioned work on several varieties of robot for military use. The fools! Don't they know how this will end?

Why, why do they never consult the nation's Mad Scientists when it comes to these sorts of projects? We've all done them. We've all seen the results: any robot sophisticated enough to be useful will inevitably go out of control. At best, they simply seek their freedom; in those cases, the damage they cause is accidental, a by-product of their perfect indifference to human life and property. They may try to destroy their creators (which always makes for an exciting afternoon), or hunt down pre-programmed targets. But there's always the possibility that they will take on the whole of humanity, with the goal of either extermination or conquest... and if they do, look for them to begin by creating others like themselves.

Once that process gets started, it's enormously difficult to stop. Robots are immune to your standard Death Ray, and generally find Heat Rays and Freeze Rays a minor inconvenience. Your best bet is some sort of electromagnetic pulse, and while that's well within the capacity of my genius, it requires expensive materials and is time-consuming to assemble.

Still, perhaps I can use this. Once the robots run mad, the civilian population will panic and civilization will teeter on the edge of collapse. If a certain Mad Scientist were to step forward and put an end to the threat, I - I mean he - would find it very easy to rise to power with the promise of keeping people safe.

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